Matthew Kelly Passion and Purpose

June 18, 2012 | Comments Off on Matthew Kelly Passion and Purpose

Back on May 5, I saw Matthew Kelly at one of his Passion and Purpose events within the Twin Cities. Yes, I know, that was a while ago. Why am I just now writing about it? Because, I’m lazy and I have had other things I’ve wanted to write about first. Besides, I am busy and I have things going on.

That being said, I wanted to give my thoughts on the event.

I’ve been following Matthew Kelly now for a few years and I must say, I enjoy his style. He isn’t the type that is going to bombard you with Church teaching, or scriptural references or the usual that you hear from a lot of Catholic speakers. What he will bombard you with, is practical uses of Church teaching mixed with humor and story telling.

I’ve wanted to see Matthew Kelly for awhile, in fact, I have a nice long list of Catholic speakers that I want to see. I am a member of Lighthouse Catholic Media’s CD of the Month Program, and I get a different Catholic CD every month. It is usually an inspirational speech discussing some issue on Church teaching. Matthew Kelly has had a few CDs through here and that is how I first heard of him.

Now, I do enjoy being bombarded with Scriptural references, as I feel that it is nice to know where Church teaching is based off of. I also enjoy hearing other references from the Catechism, the Popes, Bishops, the Saints or well, from any other resource that is within Catholicism’s rich teachings. However, the uniqueness of Matthew Kelly’s style will grab your attention and focus you in to becoming the best-version-of-yourself no matter where you are at in your faith journey as well as challenge your personal convictions.

The talk was a ton of fun. It was completely sold out and there were LOTS of people excited to see him. I for some reason didn’t think he was that popular, as I have never heard anyone else talk about him like I do. The price seemed a little steep, but the $38 for each ticket goes toward a good cause.

Matthew Kelly is developing a state of the art religious education program for teenagers who are going through the Sacrament of Confirmation. He shared a statistic that 85% of Catholics leave the Church by the age of 25. The way that the Religious Education programs are for Confirmation are still stuck in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. He is developing a program that is guided to be more one on one with the students so that you are engaging them in the areas where they are weak on. I wish that I had this program when I was teaching these last two years. In fact, I had this complaint from a couple of the students where they were either way more advanced than this, or, too far behind and didn’t get it. Having the more one-on-one session would have been able to give the advanced students a more advanced education, and catch up those that were behind. The full $38 of each ticket goes toward developing this program.

The event was very good, in fact, it was similar to listening to 3 or 4 of his CDs back to back to back, but with a little bit more guidance to it. We all took notes on various things that he said. Which of course is nice to go back to those notes. A lot of what he said more or less for me re-enforced his talks that I have heard, although there were things I have picked up that I never noticed before, as well as points he made that really struck home.

Another point that he mentioned was how 92% of things get done within the Church or within a Parish, by about 10% of those parishioners (I can’t recall the numbers anymore, but it was similar to these). It makes you wonder how if the other 90% chipped in as well, how AWESOME would the Church be doing. I’ll get into other posts more deeply about how we should be helping the Church, but for now, I’ll just say that we should be sharing our time, talents and treasures. Meaning 10% of our time, 10% of our talents and 10% of our treasures (money). There are exceptions to the rule, which I will discuss later. God knows your heart more than I do.

I don’t want to give too much away, as I feel he tells himself better than I could ever hope to. I know many times that I have drawn on examples that he has put forth in order to drive my points further home when talking with others. I would highly suggest seeing him if you have the chance and if you can, listen to his talks, they are phenomenal.

If you want more information on Matthew Kelly or his non-profit Dynamic Catholic, click on the links. Consider donating if you happen to feel God calling you to.